


I Can Teach You

by Burgundy_In_Chaucer



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Swing Set, playground romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 03:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20735834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burgundy_In_Chaucer/pseuds/Burgundy_In_Chaucer
Summary: Flynn and Lucy stumble across something unexpected after the successful completion of a mission in 1935 Boston, and finally find the courage to move their relationship to the next level. Expect lots of childlike play.





	I Can Teach You

Strolling down Harvard Street in Brookline, part of Greater Boston, in 1935, Lucy Preston pulled her stolen coat tightly about her and looked around in awe. Boston was an epicenter of American history, and to be here living it was surreal. Brookline was a suburb of Boston, and was the perfect place to hide the Lifeboat when the Team had chased Rittenhouse there to April 16, 1935. A quick Google search had revealed that this was Opening Day for the Boston Braves, and Lucy had guessed that the Rittenhouse targets were likeliest to be the five of six New England governors who were attending the game that day to see Babe Ruth’s return to Boston after sixteen years in New York.

They had left the Lifeboat in a wooded school lot off of Harvard Street in Brookline, then walked to the nearest elevated railway station to take it directly to Braves Field. The stadium was enormous, and it had taken Rufus catching a glimpse of Emma, who apparently hadn’t been able to resist seeing the Babe in person, for the Team to track down the evil members of the organization who most likely wanted to throw pre-World War Two New England into turmoil. Flynn and Wyatt had each taken out a sleeper agent in stealth mode, allowing the game to go on as planned. Unfortunately, Emma had escaped once again.

“Would you like my coat, Lucy?” Garcia Flynn asked her, ever the gentleman. Lucy and Flynn had split up from Rufus and Wyatt when they all fled the stadium, taking the El back to Brookline, but after the thrill of their escape, the cold was now setting in as the temperature dropped into the 30’s in late afternoon Boston. A light snow had fallen earlier in the day, covering the neighborhood in a dusting of white that while beautiful, was making the jaunt back to the Lifeboat slightly unpleasant.

“No, thank you, I’m OK,” Lucy smiled up at Flynn, appreciating the way his wool coat fit his tall frame. He had stolen it to wear over the very same suit he had worn on their Delta Blues mission. April 1935 Boston and November 1936 San Antonio were not too different from the perspective of men’s fashion, and the Team was trying to play smarter by reusing clothes for Flynn as much as possible. Clothing for a man measuring six feet, four inches was never all that easy to find.

Lucy cast another admiring glance his way before pulling a hat out of the pocket of her coat. Happy she could at least keep her head warm, she sighed at her failure to find gloves. “But…” she hesitated. “I, um, I _will_ take your hand, if you’re offering to keep me warm.” She blushed, a little embarrassed at her forwardness. “That is…” She cleared her throat. “It appears the woman I stole this coat from chose to keep her gloves elsewhere.” She realized instantly that she could have just stuck her hands into the pockets of the coat. A little embarrassed? Nope. A lot embarrassed.

Flynn looked down at her, his expression unreadable, and Lucy silently cursed at herself. She’d been thinking that maybe all the soft looks he’d been giving her in the three months since the Chinatown mission could have meant he might be starting to see her as more than just a teammate, but now she wasn’t so sure. _Actually, I’m pretty sure he also looks at his morning coffee that way_. Right now, he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here following her request.

But then he gave her the softest look he had given her yet in all the time she had known him, and glancing down, he gently threaded the long fingers of his right hand through the slim fingers of her left and tugged it to his side. It took Lucy‘s breath away, and she had to lean into him to support herself. He definitely didn’t seem to mind, whispering something in another language under his breath and pressing his cheek to the top of her head. She looked up at him questioningly, hopeful. After months of dancing around one another, spending nearly every waking minute together…. _is this finally happening_? Leaning her cheek against his arm, Lucy exhaled in happy disbelief, her eyebrows slightly raised as she gazed at their joined hands. Maybe this meant something, maybe it didn’t, but right now, she was exactly where she wanted to be.

——————————

They continued down the street, Flynn watching the cold breath Lucy was blowing from her lips. He was holding her hand. He was HOLDING LUCY PRESTON’S HAND! He thought back to his junior high days, when holding hands was the biggest deal in the world to a thirteen-year-old boy, and he no longer laughed at his younger self. Holding Lucy’s hand here in 1935 Boston actually WAS the biggest deal in the world and he’d fight anyone who tried to tell him otherwise.

He was under no illusion that this meant anything. After all, he had held Lucy in his arms as she had fallen apart in that Chinatown alley in 1888, and nothing had come of it. She was probably just cold. _She SAID she was cold. That’s all it is_. Yet he still allowed himself to enjoy her closeness while it lasted.

They had been nearly inseparable the last few months, months that Flynn treasured more than he could or would say. Getting to know this version of the intelligent, feisty, kind-hearted woman who was currently gripping his hand had opened his eyes to the differences between her and the journal version of her. Over the last three months, he had come to realize that for as deeply as he had thought his feelings ran for the Lucy he had come to know from her journal, how he felt for the woman who had been by his side nearly nonstop since Chinatown was so much more than that. They could sit together in silence for hours, yet when one of them finally spoke, it was as if they had been conversing for hours. On missions, they were like two bodies with one mind as they continued to thwart Rittenhouse over and over again. They were now living the “quite the team” Flynn had been hoping for for so long. It was more remarkable in person than the journal had ever let on. _SHE is remarkable_.

Lucy reached across her body with her right hand and pulled his arm closer to her. She was still walking with her cheek against his arm, and even though he couldn’t imagine it was comfortable, she was literally hugging his arm as they moved down the street together. LUCY PRESTON WAS HUGGING HIS ARM and he’d be a moron to complain.

The two walked in comfortable silence for a few more minutes, and the houses started to become more spaced out as they approached the wooded area surrounding the school where the Lifeboat was waiting. As much as he was loving their intimate stroll, Flynn instinctually began to search the landscape for sleeper agents who might have tracked them back to the Lifeboat. He was taken by the beauty of the scene, and he knew Lucy felt the same by the dreamy smile on her face as she looked about her. He loved seeing her so happy.

Except now she was letting go of his arm and pulling him forward by the hand, exclaiming as she did so. “Wait a minute, is that…?!” She sounded excited, disbelieving, not scared, but he cast a few desperate looks about them anyway to scan the area for enemies.

“Lucy, what is it?” he asked, more curious now than concerned.

“I can’t believe it!” Lucy cried out in surprise as she moved past the bushes hiding the Lifeboat, nearly dragging him past the school and into a clearing.

“Lucy, what IS it?!” She was nearly frenzied in her excitement, and while he certainly didn’t mind watching her light up like this, he really did want to know what was going on so he could make sure there was nothing here that could harm her. “Wait a minute… what IS that?!” He really needed to vary the words coming out of his mouth right now.

She had pulled them to the “back yard” of the school, which they hadn’t seen when they had arrived in the past because they had parked on the side of the building and then run immediately to the El. A large field lay before them, dusted with snow, but with brown winter grass visible where it was higher. Bare trees surrounded the field, and it seemed that the school was tucked into a forest. But what really caught Flynn’s attention was what was in the field.

Large pieces of metal were scattered haphazardly about the clearing, some as tall as twenty or more feet. Directly in front of them was a tall metal pole with four metal chains hanging from the top. At the ends of the chains were what appeared to be 3-rung ladders. Off to the left he saw a circular wooden bench attached to another metal pole by thin metal rods. Furthest from the school was an array of absurdly tall metal poles and ladders. What IS this? But then to his right, Flynn saw a swing set, although taller than any swing set he had ever seen before, and an enormous metal slide.

“Lucy, is this a playground?!”

— — — — — — — — — —

Lucy looked around the school yard. “This is amazing!” she exclaimed. “It IS a playground! Some of this equipment hasn’t been allowed on American playgrounds in DECADES!” She never thought she’d have the opportunity to see this in her time travels, but with Rufus and Wyatt apparently not yet back at the Lifeboat, she and Flynn now had the chance to check it out. She walked towards the nearest piece, a tall pole with ladder swings. “This one is called a giant stride, or a maypole,” she told Flynn, grabbing onto one of the ladders. She started to slowly jog around the pole.

Flynn laughed, and Lucy yelled at him, “Come on!”

He hesitated. “Is that thing safe?” Despite her enthusiasm, he didn’t look too confident that she was going to walk away from here uninjured. He probably had a point. Giant strides had been banned for decades after numerous injuries had occurred on them on playgrounds across the country and around the world.

Lucy slowed to a walk. “I researched the history of playgrounds for one of my undergrad history classes,” she explained. “I became fascinated after I saw an old picture of what looked like someone falling off of something that looked an awful lot like that,” she said, pointing at the tall assortment of metal bars and ladders.

“And you expect me to join you on this death trap?” he joked, but his words belied his apparent interest in the equipment as he picked up another of the ladders around the giant stride and tugged on it, testing its strength. He grunted his approval, then walked over to Lucy and took her ladder from her hands, testing the strength of its chains with another firm tug. Apparently it also met his safety standards, because with a smirk, he handed it back to Lucy, then grabbed his ladder in both hands and urged her to run with a gesture of his arm.

Lucy shrieked and once again began to jog around the pole, Flynn following a safe distance behind her. “Ready?!” she yelled. And then the two of them simultaneously lifted their feet off the ground and sailed through the air in a circle. Lucy squealed happily. She had spent months researching historical playgrounds as a college junior, so to actually get to experience what she had studied was beyond amazing. She laughed hysterically, and although she didn’t know if her elation was from her stomach dropping out from under her, her relief at Flynn allowing her to use him as a hand warmer, or the yells and noises HE was making as he flew through the air, she didn’t want this moment to end.

Unfortunately, the giant stride was quite an arm workout, and Lucy began to feel her grip slipping. She could just picture herself flying through the air and crashing into something. Remembering from her research that that was exactly how many giant stride injuries had occurred, she yelled over to Flynn that she was about to stop, and together, they bounced their shoes along the dirt and slowed their steps until they were walking around the pole once again. “I can see why kids used to love these so much!” Lucy exclaimed, smoothing her hands down the front of her coat. “I can also understand why maybe they’re not the safest things to be on the playground.”

“If we’re talking about unsafe, I’m voting for THAT,” Flynn said, giving the giant stride one last (_appreciative_?) look and pointing at the arches and ladders of the thirty-foot tall metal structure. “I mean, I could climb that, but imagine falling from that height? It’s like asking for an injury! Do you know anything about it?”

Lucy bit her lip so he didn’t think her smile was her making fun of his clear longing to have another go on the giant stride. “I don’t know if this has a specific name, maybe just a jungle gym. But it was a picture of what looks like someone falling from equipment almost exactly like this one that first piqued my interest in historic playground equipment,” Lucy explained. “I’ll find the picture for you when we get back to the bunker. It’s truly terrifying.” She shivered, then looked up startled as Flynn offered her his arm. She wasn’t cold, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. Smiling shyly, she again wrapped her hands around his arm (_hello, muscles_), tucking them into the crook of his elbow, and found the arrangement to be rather toasty. Or maybe it was the heat spreading through her body at the nearness of him, she couldn’t really tell, but she thought that strolling around the play yard for a few minutes to get warm was looking like a very good idea at this point.

As they walked, she nodded at the cone shaped apparatus and said, “This one is called a witch’s hat. You can see why based on the shape. But the scariest thing about witches’ hats is that they led to five deaths in a single year at one point. You almost never see these anywhere anymore, luckily. I think we should skip this one.”

Flynn checked out the equipment to which Lucy pointed, then nodded in agreement and gave it a wide berth. Lucy gladly sidestepped the witch’s hat, although it really was fascinating to see one in person.

Feeling nostalgic all of a sudden for an old playground standby from her childhood, Lucy looked up at Flynn and asked, “How about a trip down the slide?”

He looked at her, a twinkle in his eye. “You don’t see many metal slides anymore, I’m guessing because of the metal retaining heat so well?” he asked. She nodded. He continued, “You know, we had several metal slides on the first childhood playground I can remember. I was so tall, it was easy for me to grab onto the edges of the slide and just run up the damn thing. I managed to skip the line that way, but it definitely wasn’t the best way to make friends.”

Lucy laughed, picturing a lanky green-eyed child ignoring the rules even as a youngster. It was not that hard to imagine after seeing him on the giant stride. “Well, we’re not getting burned by the slide today,” she said. “Let’s go!” She moved to the base of the slide’s ladder and started climbing. The height she reached was dizzying, and she couldn’t believe that parents had ever been willing to let their children play on such tall playground equipment. Getting to the top, she held onto the horizontal bar and sat down. She turned around and gave Flynn a warning look. “Don’t you dare try to sneak down right after me!” She hoped he interpreted her stare as stern.

He laughed and held up his hands innocently. “I would never!” he said, “And besides, it’ll be more fun to watch you yell and scream your way down this thing from up here.” His smirk was making her stomach do all sorts of acrobatics.

She squinted her eyes at him playfully and then let go of the bar. She started yelling in anticipation, but only slid about one foot down the slide, until with a ripping sound, she was brought to a jarring halt. _What on earth_? Her yell died in her throat. She heard laughter behind her, but not just the low chuckles she had grown used to from Flynn over the last few months. This was an all out belly laugh. “Flynn, why did I stop?!” she yelled frantically, flailing about with her legs and trying to pull her way back up to the top platform.

He couldn’t speak for a few seconds through his laughter, which had him doubled over in his mirth, but wiping his eyes, he finally managed, “Just be still, Lucy!” He guided her hands to the low bars at the top of the slide and told her to hold on tightly. Then she watched in growing embarrassment as he reached over and unwound the material of her dress from a giant screw that was sticking out near the top of the slide.

“Oh my God!” Lucy moaned, “I tore my dress!” This was so typical for her. If she didn’t have to hold on to these metal bars for dear life, she’d be burying her face in her hands right about now.

Flynn continue to chuckle as he freed her from the screw. “Well Lucy, I think we’ve identified another reason slides are no longer made this way,” he declared. She nodded her head in agreement. “Can you imagine your clothes getting stuck on that but instead of being stuck on the slide, you dangle over the edge?”

She shuddered again. “OK, I think I’m ready to be off this thing,” she said, and letting go of the platform, she slid down to the bottom and hopped off as quickly as she could. Truly it was as if the universe was trying to give her an in-person history lesson on the dangers of old playgrounds.

She laughed as Flynn yelled his way to the bottom of the slide, and then didn’t even wait for him to offer his arm before tucking her cold hands once again into the warmth of his elbow. He looked down at her and smiled.

‘What do you think, Lucy?” he asked. “There’s one more thing here you haven’t mentioned yet.” He nodded in the direction of the swings, much to her chagrin. “Pretty basic, and I think as long as we take it easy, no one will get injured or have their clothes nearly ripped from their body.” He laughed again. She blushed.

“Well, actually, I ...” Lucy lowered her head and muttered the rest of her sentence under her breath, too embarrassed to tell him the truth of why she was actually trying to avoid the swings.

“What was that? I missed what you said,” Flynn said patiently, but he appeared for all intents and purposes like a journalist about to widely crack open a story. Lucy huffed a breath, trying to warn him with a glare but then gave up and admitted, “I don’t know how to ride the swings.” She looked up at him sheepishly, feeling the blush in her cheeks, daring him to make fun of her.

Flynn blinked, and the only word she could think of to describe his face in that moment, although she didn’t believe it, was ‘smitten’. And maybe, inexplicably, he was, for in the next moment, he extricated his arm from her grasp and turning to face her, brought his hands up to rest his fingertips against her cheekbones. She stared up at him, heart pounding, while he gazed at her for one second, two. And then he leaned down and for half a second, Lucy thought he was going to kiss her (_please_), but then he grazed his lips against her forehead, murmuring against her skin, “Then I can teach you.”

Lucy’s breath caught in her throat and she felt tingling at the back of her head. She would happily spend the rest of her life with Flynn’s lips on her. And just like that, she knew. The endless thoughts about him, the intense feelings she had for him, were not just friendship, or attraction, or even infatuation. What she felt was deeper than that, and she feared in the best, happiest way possible that she might be in love with him.

She could have cried. She should have learned her lesson the first time around, that it was unwise to have feelings for a widowed man, because now that time travel was possible, who knew which memories from his past could return? Flynn had said so many times he wanted to save his wife and daughter. Yet here she was, feeling one hundred times more for him than she had ever felt for Wyatt, and clearly things did not go well when time travel brought HIS wife back. It felt like she was just setting herself up for more heartache. But this man, this giant dumpster fire of a man, so fierce when facing an enemy, was so soft with her. COULD he actually feel something for her? Would he ever be willing to choose her over his former life?

Lucy was rescued from her thoughts by the feel of his scruff against the delicate skin of her forehead as he removed his lips from her. His kind words, uttered in that low gravely voice of his, had seeped into her, had given her strength. She was worried about the past returning, but SHE was here with him now. And that seemed to mean something to him.

“Do you promise you won’t make fun of me?” Now emboldened, Lucy reached for his hand and looked up at him expectantly.

His face was unreadable as he glanced down at their entwined hands, and then back up to gaze into her eyes. “Of course,” he promised. Flicking his tongue over his lips, he smiled at her much like he had the night she came to his room with a bottle of vodka and an interest in getting to know him. They walked towards the swings and Lucy approached them hesitantly. “Lucy, you don’t have to do this if you feel uncomfortable”, he said, his voice filled with understanding, even though she hadn’t yet told him why she felt like she did about the swings.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, turning to face him. “I just never learned. Fun wasn’t really a priority in my house growing up, at least not for me. Amy knew how to ride the swings.” She sighed. She had taken his other hand in hers at this point while they stood facing one another, but she looked off into the distance wistfully. “When I look back on my childhood, I realize that I was a project for my mother. Time I could’ve spent playing outside was used for studying history, or piano. Amy got to go on dates, join the school tennis team, go to playgrounds. But for me, there wasn’t any time for those things.” She looked at Flynn as if to see if he understood.

He leaned down, allowing him to look directly into her eyes. “And yet you miss her, this woman who tried to control you. This woman who denied you a childhood.” He stood to his full height, and reclaiming his hands, he pulled her to his chest and wrapped his long arms around her.

Lucy’s sighed contentedly. _He gets it_. Moving past her moment of surprise when she found herself wrapped in a Garcia Flynn bear hug, she reached her slim arms around his waist to hug him back, wishing she had done this long ago. With her cheek pressed against his chest and his body warming hers, she was as warm as she was ever going to be out here in the fading light of the chilly Boston afternoon. She wanted to stay here just like this until Rufus and Wyatt got back to the Lifeboat. _Take your time, boys_. But Flynn had other ideas.

“Lucy, you’re wrong about one thing.” Lucy felt his chin moving against the top of her head, where he had rested it as they stood together in the cold. He stepped back to look at her. “There is time. There’s time now for you to reclaim a tiny part of your childhood.” He stepped over to the swing nearest him. Pulling on it and the one next to it to make sure everything checked out, he held out the swing closest to her for her to take.

She felt more nervous about this than she probably should, although for thirty years, her inability to ride a swing had assumed a place of increasing importance in her mind as representing her controlled childhood. Was she ready to just let go? She almost felt as if she’d be letting go of her mother if she were to finally learn. But seeing Flynn there, so patient, so accepting of everything about her, she knew she’d be all right. Stepping over to the swing and giving him a half smile, she sat down on the wooden seat. Gripping the ropes as if her life depended on it, she dangled her feet uselessly below her and looked up at him expectantly.

Flynn was running his hands up and down the ropes of her swing, following them up… and up… and up… She followed his gaze to where they attached to the overhead beam via a metal loop. Instead of running straight up, the ropes extended slightly outward from each swing. “They’re extraordinarily tall,” Flynn observed. He finally sat down on the swing next to her. “OK, Lucy, are you ready?” Flynn looked at her, eyebrows raised.

She took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

He smiled reassuringly at her. “OK. This will be so much easier if you start by walking yourself backwards until you’re on your toes.” He demonstrated for her, and she followed suit, although he was a ways behind her due to his ridiculously long legs. “Now watch as I demonstrate.” He shifted his weight from his toes to the seat and picked up his feet, explaining as he did so. “And then you lean back as you swing forward, then pull your legs in and lean forward as you swing back.” He swung back and forth a few times to demonstrate, then stopped back on his toes next to her. He reached over with his foot to bump her ankle. “Your turn.”

His patience in explaining to her something any child could do made Lucy feel like it was okay that she didn’t know how to do this, that it was okay if she messed up. She looked at the ground and went over in her mind what Flynn had demonstrated. She could do this. It took Lucy a few tries; it just wasn’t intuitive to lean in the opposite direction from which the swing was moving. But finally, leaning back when the swing was flying forward just made sense if she wanted to swing any higher, and then… "Flynn, I’m doing it!" Higher and higher she swung, and then with a whoop, Flynn was swinging next to her. Lucy shrieked with laughter. Back and forth they went, and Lucy felt an enormous weight lift from her. Not being able to do this had felt like such a mental block for most of her life, and now it was gone. She felt like she could do anything.

Then she looked over at Flynn and her stomach dropped. He was going really high. Too high. _He’s going to flip over the top!_ She started to panic. “Flynn! This is too high! We have to stop!”

“OK, Lucy, stop moving your legs,” he said, his voice raised to be heard above the wind, but calm. She did as he said, and her swing started to reach lower and lower heights, no longer being driven by her. His did the same. When they got closer to the ground, Flynn put his feet down and dragged them in the dirt, and Lucy mirrored him. Soon they were hanging still, gripping the ropes of their swings, and looking breathlessly at one another, hair windblown, cheeks flushed.

He spoke first. “Lucy, you did it!” He reached over to her and gave her hand a quick squeeze even as she continued to grip her ropes. “I’m sorry I lost track of how high we were going. How were children not always getting hurt on these? We must have been at least twenty feet up!” he exclaimed.

Lucy laughed. “Believe it or not, at the time, evidence suggested that playgrounds such as this helped kids develop the skills necessary to AVOID serious injuries,” she explained.

Flynn looked at her in disbelief. “AVOID?!”

“Well, the thought was that if kids engaged in reasonable risks that allowed them to develop physically, that in the end, they’d get injured less often and the injuries would be less severe...” her voice trailed off. Taking risks? To get hurt less? It was like she was speaking to herself. She had just learned how to ride a swing at the age of thirty-six, so she could pretty much do anything. She knew what she had to do next. It was time to get on with her life. Rising from her swing as if in a trance, Lucy took the three steps needed to put her face to face with a still seated Flynn.

“Lucy, what are you doing?” he asked. He looked confused, but also hopeful, if she allowed herself a bit optimism going forward. Her eyes moved intently over his face.

“Taking a risk,” she breathed, and positioning herself between his thighs, she gently took his face between her now freezing hands and leaned in to softly press her lips to his.

For a second or two, he didn’t move, and she began to panic. She pulled back wide eyed to look at him. Eyes closed, hands raised, every inch of him was telling her that she had messed up. Crying inwardly, she took a step back.

And then he seemed to come to his senses, and reaching forward, he grabbed her by the front of her coat and pulled her to him, his hands finally coming to rest on her hips as they both sought out their second kiss. Lucy laughed in relief and swung her arms onto his shoulders as she leaned further into him. They kissed again, and again, and again. She moved her hands to the back of his neck, and to his face, wanting him even closer to her. Minutes passed, and the only things either of them heard were happy sighs and soft noises as they finally did this thing they had both wanted to do for far too long. She had taken the risk, and it felt perfect.

— — — — — — — — — —

LUCY PRESTON WAS KISSING HIM!

Flynn wasn’t really processing any other thoughts at the moment. He felt like he was floating. One minute, Lucy had been talking about risk taking on playgrounds, and the next minute, she was standing between his legs kissing him.

Much as he wanted to continue kissing her forever, Flynn knew that Rufus and Wyatt were likely to get back at any moment. With a sound of regret, he broke off their kiss. Whimpering, Lucy pulled him back in for more, and he gave in to the feel of her lips, and her tongue, and her hands, for several more minutes, until even she seemed to know that they needed to make themselves presentable for the imminent arrival of their teammates. Flynn gazed at Lucy as she stood up, wondering how and when she had ended up in his lap, and also if he looked as unkempt as she did. She reached out to smooth down his hair with her hand, so he could only assume that he, too, looked as if he had just been kissed to within an inch of his life. _Worth it._

After tidying her own hair, Lucy gave Flynn a coy smile and walked behind him. “Hold on” she murmured, and the next thing he knew, he was moving forward as she pushed him like a child on his swing. He looked forward to each time her tiny hands pushed against his back, a feeling which felt half a tease, half a promise, of more to come of what they had just shared. They were both quiet, just enjoying being in the first early moments of something new.

And then out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement, and lowered his head in regret, as it could only be Rufus and Wyatt returning to the Lifeboat. Lucy placed her hands firmly on either side of his waist and ran along with him to slow him down, and when he came to a stop, she pressed herself momentarily against his back with her arms around him and her cheek pressed against him. Ignoring the confused sputtering sounds coming from their teammates, Flynn and Lucy reached for one another’s hands, and the two made their way over to the Lifeboat, smiling at one another the entire time. Flynn helped Lucy up and into her seat, eager to get back to the present so they could begin this next phase of their partnership through time. And as the Lifeboat door closed on the Brookline playground, Flynn cast one last look upon the swings where Lucy had finally taken the risk that had made it all possible.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to GarcysFlereal for beta-ing and boosting my confidence with her squeals!
> 
> I will learn how to embed these links shortly, but wanted to get the story posted to catch the last day of Garcy Weekend. 
> 
> https://www.ft.com/content/b65420f4-552b-11db-acba-0000779e2340
> 
> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Evolution_of_American_Playgrounds#Model_Playgrounds

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Fanart] Swing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20972756) by [UnUnpredictableMe (DraejonSoul)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DraejonSoul/pseuds/UnUnpredictableMe)


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